Arizona voters get (another) kick in teeth
Arizona voters got a kick in the teeth this week. A federal judge let stand a legislative scheme aimed at weakening your constitutional rights.
No longer can you assume, when you sign a petition to put a proposal on the ballot, that your signature will actually count.
While Arizonans have a constitutional right to make laws via voter initiative, the Republicans who control state government have spent the last five years doing everything they can to weaken that right.
Your right. The one given you 107 years ago by the state’s founders.
One of those schemes, dubbed the Strikeout Law, automatically invalidates the signatures of all voters who sign a petition if a paid or out-of-state petition circulator doesn’t show up when subpoenaed to court.
That one was used last year by a trio of “dark money” groups desperate to keep an initiative to require dark money disclosure off the ballot. Because, of course, it would have passed.
The Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity and Concerned Veterans for America together with the Arizona Free Enterprise Club – the front group for APS’s 2014 dark money campaign to elect its own regulators – sued to toss the Outlaw Dirty Money initiative off the ballot.
The dark money groups subpoenaed more than a dozen mostly out-ofstate petition circulators who collected signatures for Outlaw Dirty Money, people they contended were not qualified. None of those circulators showed up in court.
Thus, the dark money groups contended the judge had no choice but to invalidate every signature they collected.
No need for a judge to actually look at the evidence to determine whether each petition circulator was qualified. No need for a judge to consider whether the people who signed those petitions were voters who had a right to have their voice heard.
No need, apparently, for a judge at all.
A monkey would do.
The petitions, containing 8,824 voter signatures, were tossed sight unseen and the Supreme Court found this disgraceful scheme legal.
The initiative died and dark money continues to flow.
No doubt the dark money crowd will try the same thing next year as Outlaw Dirty Money tries again to get on the ballot. The group is relying, as it did in 2018, mostly on volunteers but getting 356,467 voter signatures is no easy task.
It just was made harder. U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton on Monday let the Strikeout Law stand.
A coalition of liberal advocacy groups — including one that is running
a 2020 initiative to outlaw predatory lenders and their 204% interest rates — filed a federal lawsuit, hoping to overturn it.
The groups contend the Strikeout Law throws up unconstitutional obstacles designed to make it harder for voters to exercise their right to make laws at a ballot box. Supporters of the law, meanwhile, say it’s needed to combat fraud.
On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton let the law stand — a decision likely to remain in place now for the duration of the 2020 election season.
Better, apparently, to punish the voters who legitimately signed a petition thinking their voice mattered than to punish the circulator who was a noshow in court.
In her ruling, Bolton acknowledged the provision could make it more difficult to make laws via voter initiative but found there wasn’t sufficient evidence thus far of “irreparable harm” or any “chilling effect.”
“Because the Arizona Supreme Court has already held that the Strikeout Law does not hinder or restrict the initiative process,” she wrote, “this Court concludes that the Strikeout Law does not severely burden Plaintiffs’ fundamental right to vote.”
It’s worth noting that the law also doesn’t severely burden our leaders. Or burden them at all.
In fact, the Strikeout Law doesn’t apply to the nominating petitions elected officials must submit in order to qualify for the ballot. It applies only to those seeking to exercise their constitutional right to bypass them.
Funny how that works.